The NIE Iran Report and Alan Dershowitz

Throughout most of the Cold War any challenge to the proposition that "the Russians are coming and they're 30 feet tall" was met with derision and outrage by the Right. As a veteran of both the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, I saw repeated rejection of any intelligence estimate that questioned that mantra or placed Soviet military capabilities or intent to use them in any realistic light. The most notorious, but not the only, instance was the appointment of a "Team B" to challenge the view of intelligence experts that the Soviet economy was a mess and its military not much better.

Of course, as we now know, the intelligence community, especially the CIA, was right and the Right was wrong.

Now comes Professor Dershowitz, in a rant that is not only hysterical but almost catatonic, presuming to know more about what is, or is not, going on in Iran than the sum total of sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies combining hundreds of thousands of the nation's most expert intelligence collectors and analysts who annually consume forty or fifty billion American tax dollars.

One did not hear much from Professor Dershowitz when those same intelligence agencies held to the position that Iran was on track to develop nuclear weapons, or at least when President Bush made that claim while suppressing any questions to the contrary. So, by collecting new intelligence and placing it under more intense scrutiny, and, one hears, by threatening to release this report if the White House continued to suppress it, these same intelligence experts suddenly become incompetents and "nincompoops" pursuing, according to Professor Dershowitz, some nefarious agenda of their own. It is never clear what that agenda is supposed to be.

Sounds like the Cold War all over again. Intelligence is good when it tells you what you want to hear. Otherwise, it is dangerously flawed if not sinister.

Experience and common sense tells me that these sixteen agencies with hundreds of thousands of employees pursuing a secret agenda doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The real question is this: What is Professor Dershowitz's agenda here? Many bloggers automatically assumed is has to do with Israel. But Professor Dershowitz does not say so and, having known and respected him for many years, I presume if he is angry because the intelligence report undermines his broader purpose, he would have the courage to simply say so.
Until he does, one must shake one's head in sadness at a fine mind longing for the Cold War, or for a new villain to justify a wrong-headed empirial militancy in the Middle East, or who knows what.

What has undermined public support for the war in Iraq is the suspicion that other agendas, not least oil among them, were at work but not being disclosed by our leaders. It is a sure guarantee that the American people will turn against any foreign enterprise when they come to suspect that they are not being told the truth.

Perhaps now is the time for everyone to put their cards on the table.

Comments

[cheforacle]

I am glad you wrote this piece Senator. For many years, as an American Jewish attorney, I harbored great admiration and respect for Dershowitz enjoying his books and generally pleased when I saw him on TV advocating certain positions. Since 9/11 (like Mayor Koch, Dennis Miller and others) he has gone off his rocker demonizing the "obvious suspects" like Iran and Hussein while not recognizing that many of our worst enemies may be in places like Somalia and probably are in Pakistan. His ill-informed rants have disturbed me greatly because as an American Jew who loves Israel, I believe he frequently advocates in ways that are actually against Israel's better interest and stirs up more anti-Semitism than already exists in this country and elsewhere. Last year we saw the limits of Israel's military strength as it lost a war in which it destroyed much of Southern Lebanon and Beirut. Now Hezbollah is stronger than they were before. Knee jerk reactions like those of Dershowitz and many affiliated with the Bush administration will not work. Improved intelligence and covert operations are necessary to defeat the terrorists not war mongering and strengthening crazy regimes. Ahmadinejad is not even that popular in Iran right now but Bush (and people who make pronouncements like Dershowitz) strengthen his hand.

[WHATEVER7]

You know how an Ivy-league law professor is lying, don't you?

When his lips are moving.

[BoulderSue]

Gary, it's been time for everyone to put their cards on the table for a long time. I think GWB may have run out of cards or has had such a bad hand for so long he dares not show them. I grew up during the Cold War near a major (and therefore prime target for the Soviets) SAC base. The nightmares that produced didn't stop, based on all the anti-Communist rhetoric, the sheer number of nuclear weapon carrying aircraft I saw every day, and a lot of other tales I could tell you, didn't go away for a long time. In the second grade I won an essay contest on the subject "Should Everyone Have a Bomb Shelter?" The sheer number of weapons apparently being produced by us and the Soviets (Not to mention suspicions of the Chinese) not only gave me nightmares, but made no sense. Why did everyone have to have the capacity to kill everyone 10 or 20 times over? That and the money spent turned me into a Liberal. The Hawks and the over emphasis on the dangers of Communism, and some of the results they produced made me distrustful of our government. The Cuban Missile Crisis was real enough, and some other incidents were terrifying. But then I learned, as you say, it was mostly overstated. I hate the present administration's attempts at using fear of something far more dfficult to pin down and define: terrorism. It's sort of like the war on drugs or crime. I am determined not to let them scare me into the equivalent of a bomb shelter again, and they'd better stat telling some truth!

[MinerSam]

We have 3 problems that blocks a US informed electorate :

1) Prevailance of dysfuntion. An inability to see that nothing is black and white (w/no grappling w/this fault) perpetuated by a "president" who declared "I don't do nuance"

2) Republican controlled Media MASS BRAINWASHING people, but when shits hit the fan destroys all credibility and muddying the fact that events change on the ground.

3) A poorly educated electorate (which Republicans thrive on)

Iran (like the US) is a mixed bag. They have extremists and moderates. Bush Inc empowered the Radicals. And as a matter of fact also endangered Israel.

After 9/11 in squares all over Iran they lit candles for US , unhampered by anyone! Iran contributed $600M to our efforts in Afghanistan insisted the word Democracy be included in their constitution.

They reached out stating that they will stop internal retoric (hate for Israel and the US) in exchange for some respect.

Mr. Bush DESTROYED ALL THAT IN his SHOCKING speech calling Iran part of his "axis of evil"..and went after the first one.

What would you do in the mean time if you were on such a list? Sweep the driveway?

But Bush/Cheeney/Rove's endangerment of the US, Israel and the world did not stop there.
They dropped the Middle East Peace Proecess on the floor like Reagan did before him, not to mention BEING A BAD FRIEND TO ISRAEL by not stopping them in the NATUTRE of their RESPONSE to the ATTACK by Hezbolah, Stuck potenial nuclear developers in the eye by making a big scene in India..etc. Wrong at every turn.

Furthermore, reading intelligence requires
INTELLIGENCE in the White House. Need I say more?

Dershawitz needs to do a little Nuance (A reflection of intelligence).

While Iran has been funding violence as they supplied Hezbolah with 10,000 rockets, have supplied IEDs in Iraq. THE ANSWER RIGHT NOW AS ALWAYS IS TO SIT DOWN WITH IRAN AND TREAT THEM LIKE THE Persia they are. Ya don't like what they are doing? TELL THEM OFF IN PERSON!

[jeffepops]

Gary, your position may be correct, but I don't understand where you get off with your description of Dershowitz's piece as "a rant that is not only hysterical but almost catatonic". It's bad metaphor as well as uncivilized ( and this is the phrase HuffPo editors used to link to Alan's blog post -- talk about editorial bias...) and inaccurate.

Time will bear out who is right and who wrong in this instance, but I am wary of any report issued under the imprimateur of the Bush Administration and its intelligence apparatus (wasn't it just revealed that the CIA destroyed potentially incriminating interrogation videos?).

If the IAEA is skeptical, and we know that civilian nuclear energy facilities can genereate weapons grade nuclear material, Dershowitz may have a point worth considering. Are you enough of an expert on the subject that you can dismiss his allegations out-of-hand? I think not.

[guajiro]

FACTS:the halting of its secret enrichment and weapon design efforts in 2003 proves only that Iran made a tactical move. It suspended work that, if discovered, would unambiguously reveal intent to build a weapon. It has continued other work, crucial to the ability to make a bomb, that it can pass off as having civilian applications."

In light of these facts, he goes on to wonder who stands to benefit, a reasonable approach:

"The more likely explanation is that there is an agenda hiding in the report. What then might that agenda be? To find a hidden agenda one should always look for the beneficiaries. Who wins from this deeply flawed report? Well, certainly Iran does, but it is unlikely that Iranian interests could drive any American agenda. Lincy and Milhollin surmise that:


"We should be suspicious of any document that suddenly gives the Bush administration a pass on a big national security problem it won't solve during its remaining year in office. Is the administration just washing its hands of the intractable Iranian nuclear issue by saying, '[i]f we can't fix it, it ain't broke?'"

My own view is that the authors of the report were fighting the last war. No, not the war in Iraq, but rather what they believe was Vice President Cheney's efforts to go to war with Iran."

So you see Mr. Hart, he is challenging the assumption that the report is correct in light of the obvious contradictory evidence. Upon hearing of the report's conclusions, I too immediately assumed what Dersho did; that someone, somehow had provided this report to save face for Bush. I thought maybe the Chinese were protecting their own interests by not allowing the U.S. Navy a port in storm, sending a message to Bush. This seemingly contradictory report means the Chinese won and Bush had to back down in Iran. As you well know, the Oligarchy media will never allow the public to see their pawns (our elected officials) to be publicly humiliated.
p.s. I don't agree with Dersho much.

[robotfog]

Dershowitz has no meaning in my world.

[SeaOats]

Does anyone listen to what Dershewitz has to say about the Middle East? He's long since lost his ability to think clearly on that subject.

[guajiro]

Mr.Hart, it appears to me Dersho is simply presenting convincing facts that make it appear the Iranians ARE continuing the improvement of technology and resources to conclude an atomic weapon. His facts are very convincing. You question his judgement simply on the fact that there are SIXTEEN agenices, and that based on the amount of agencies, their conclusions must be more correct than Dersho's. He presents facts, and then he asserts his incredulity.
FACTS: "During the past year, a period when Iran's weapons program was supposedly halted, the government has been busy installing some 3,000 gas centrifuges at its plant at Natanz. These machines could, if operated continuously for about a year, create enough enriched uranium to provide fuel for a bomb. In addition, they have no plausible purpose in Iran's civilian nuclear effort. All of Iran's needs for enriched uranium for its energy programs are covered by a contract with Russia.

FACTS:"Iran is also building a heavy water reactor at its research center at Arak. This reactor is ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of little use in an energy program like Iran's, which does not use plutonium for reactor fuel. India, Israel and Pakistan have all built similar reactors -- all with the purpose of fueling nuclear weapons. And why, by the way, does Iran even want a nuclear energy program, when it is sitting on an enormous pool of oil that is now skyrocketing in value? And why is Iran developing long-range Shahab missiles, which make no military sense without nuclear warheads to put on them?

[oldpotsmuggler]

One thing you can say about Dershowitz is that he will certainly do the job less expensively than the CIA. And when you consider who is intended to the ultimate final consumer of the NIE, it would be hard to say that his results would be any less satisfactory.

My guess is that the dude just got an invitation to some big shin dig at the whitehouse and simply wanted to ingratiate himself with the host is preparation for sitting through a night of small talk. Hell, he might even get a toast in his honor, on the inreasing likelihood the GWB is back in his cups.

[jsarets]

The United States and Israel are very similar politically. They both have a right/left polarization dominated by a deep division in their views on foreign policy and social empowerment/entitlement. Their right-wing and left-wing are substantially analogous to our's.

So when American progressives criticize AIPAC, CUFI, Likud, or many prominent Jewish-American intellectuals and journalists, they certainly aren't being anti-Semitic, and they are no more anti-Israeli than they are anti-American for opposing the Bush administration.

They are merely expressing opposition for the Israeli right-wing, which is (IMHO) as disastrous for Israel as the neocons are for America. I encourage American progressives to learn more about their Israeli counterparts, because we get along famously.

Israel is a wonderful, beautiful country with a family-, community-, and education-oriented culture. It is absolutely worth American cooperation in its defense. But as in America, there is a widespread belief that the force posture and rhetoric associated with this defense is counterproductive and incredibly dangerous.

If our respective right-wings really cared about Israel, they wouldn't be taking this hard-line, confrontational, militarist, and isolationist approach to foreign policy. But it seems that the desire to keep a tight grip on political power and to suppress democratic trends away from social Darwinism is worth threatening Israel's survival and America's influence in world affairs.

[schmuckwithearlaps]

Is Mr. Hart forgetting one item in his post? Iran is run by someone who can't wait until the day he has the power to destroy America. Yet he is a hero to a few extremists in this country because he hates Israel and denies the Holocaust. Professor Dershowitz can see beyond the intelligence report because he knows that the people running Iran are killing our soldiers in Iraq, counting the days until they can strike us here, and in the short run using their oil resources to silence any criticism. The absolute truth of that makes the recent "pro-Iran" intelligence report worth very little, and Dershowitz is couragously telling us what we do not want to hear.

[Malkintent]

Mr. Hart, thanks for standing up against the bully Dershowitz and the other dead-enders on the right. Their disapointment that there won't be another war and thier subsequent conspiracy theories tell us all we need to know about them.

[westwind]

Dershowitz is starting to sound more and more like that ex-communist, now neocon nut-job, David Horowitz. There was a time in the not so distant past that I valued Dershowitz for his use of logic in the way he explained his views. I remember with pleasure his demolition of Alan Keyes in a debate on religion on C-SPAN a number of years back. Of course, a three year old could take Keyes apart using logic, but Dershowitz' performance was masterful in its own right.

However, the longer the Bush administration lasts, the more blinkered and irrational Dershowitz becomes, and Gary Hart's mention of "a fine mind" seems to be overly kind, or at the very least only historically correct.

[fedupwithpolitics]

If it's Dershowitz, it's about Israel. That's the only thing that gets him catatonic. If Israel wants war with Iran, then Dershowitz will lead the charge, whether or not it's in the interest of the US.